Thefts Rise with Price of Bitcoin

How secure are your bitcoins?  From Information Week:

That rise in value has driven hackers to attack online wallet services that store bitcoins. "Each of these companies had been operating officially for only a few months, yet already had entrusted to them millions of dollars that are now in the hands of cybercrooks," Paul Ducklin, head of technology for Sophos in the Asia Pacific region, said Tuesday in a blog post.

Malware writers have also taken a keen interest in bitcoins, with some -- especially Russian gangs -- modifying their crimeware tools to identify and steal any bitcoins found on infected PCs. "There are numerous malware families today that either perform Bitcoin mining or directly steal the contents of victims' Bitcoin wallets, or both," according to a blog post from Robert Lipovsky, a researcher at security firm ESET.

The World's Most Honest Apple Picker

From the UK Metro:

A pickpocket surprised his victim when he posted him a handwritten note of the 1,000 contacts on his stolen iPhone.  Zou Bin received the 11-page letter after sending a series of threatening texts demanding his Apple handset to be returned.

He was allegedly robbed after sharing a taxi with a man in the central province of Hunan in China, the Xinhua state news agency reported. ‘I know you are the man who sat beside me. I can assure you that I will find you,’ he wrote in the text message. ‘Look through the contact numbers in my mobile and you will know what trade I am in.  ‘Send me back the phone to the address below if you are sensible.’  Zou said he was ‘astonished’ when he received a package containing the note days later, although the thief did not return the stolen iPhone.

Bitcoin Passes $1000 Mark

From USA Today:

Happy Thanksgiving Bitcoin.  The value of the so-called cryptocurrency surged above $1,000 as it becomes easier to use as a way to pay and easier to access for investors looking for an alternative to gold.

One Bitcoin was briefly worth $1.073 on Wednesday, up from less than $100 earlier this year, according to Mt. Gox, which hosts and operates a popular Bitcoin trading platform. Later in the day it dropped back to $930.

"Bitcoin is just starting to break out into the mainstream," said Eric Tilenius, executive-in-residence at Scale Venture Partners, who has a small percentage of his investment portfolio in the digital currency.

Bitcoin Black Friday Shopping

From CNN:

The Bitcoin community is gearing up for a holiday shopping spree by hosting its own Black Friday event.

Hundreds of merchants will be joining "Bitcoin Friday" on Nov. 29, selling everything from Christmas trees to clothes, to web domains.

Bitcoin Friday deals include unlocked phones from GSM Nation and discounted plane tickets from Cheapair.com. OKCupid, which has been accepting bitcoins since April, will be participating as well.

Media outlets are jumping into the Bitcoin deals bandwagon too: GOOD Magazine is giving away $5 discounts for subscriptions and the Free Press is slashing shipping costs. Reddit is also offering a deal on "Reddit Gold."

Beware the NSA Botnet

From Tech Dirt:

Over the weekend, the Dutch media operation NRC published yet anhad infected 50,000 computer networks with malware. The only really new thing here is the number. We already knew the NSA's TAO (Tailored Access Operations) group was infecting computers around the globe using packet injection, via a system it calls "quantum injection", and that it's used these to install malware on key computers inside Belgacom, the Belgian telco giant. However, the latest report basically shows that the NSA has been able to compromise computers and networks in the same manner all around the globe . . .
other Ed Snowden slide, showing how the NSA

Bitcoin Gets Galactic Boost

From The Verge:

Richard Branson believes in Bitcoin, and he's putting his money where his mouth is. The billionaire CEO has announced that his commercial space startup Virgin Galactic will now accept payment from future astronauts in the virtual currency.

"Virgin Galactic is a company looking into the future, so is Bitcoin," Branson writes in a blog post on the Virgin site. "So it makes sense we would offer Bitcoin as a way to pay for your journey to space."

Google Exec: "Encrypt Everything!"

From The Verge:

Since revelations of the NSA's widespread data collection and monitoring earlier this year, Google has staunchly denied working with the government agency and has taken it to task on a number of occasions. After calling the NSA surveillance "outrageous" earlier this month, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has come out against the agency again in an interview with Bloomberg News. "The solution to government surveillance is to encrypt everything," Schmidt said in a speed at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. "We can end government censorship in a decade."